Twenty-one sanctions packages
Published 6 October 2026
The EU's sanctions chronology begins before the 24 February 2022 full-scale invasion. The Council's official timeline dates the first package to 22 February, after Russia recognised the separatist-held territories. It followed with a second package on 25 February and a third across 28 February to 2 March. The later packages added different kinds of restrictions rather than simply renewing one undifferentiated embargo. The timeline separates individual listings, financial restrictions, export controls, energy measures and anti-circumvention rules. Those categories matter because freezing a person's assets, excluding a bank from a messaging service and banning an oil import operate through different legal and commercial mechanisms. Counting packages alone cannot tell the reader what changed. (Council of the EU, Timeline:Packages of sanctions against Russia since February 2022,2022 entries)
The sixth package, adopted on 3 June 2022, was the major oil-import step. It prohibited purchase, import or transfer of Russian crude and certain petroleum products into the EU, with a phaseout of six months for crude and eight for refined products. The announcement provided a temporary exception for pipeline crude going to member states whose geography created particular dependence and limited alternatives. Bulgaria and Croatia received separate temporary derogations for specified products. The June announcement did not mean every Russian barrel stopped reaching every member state immediately. (Council, sixth-package release, 3 June 2022)
The Council's explanatory page supplies the operational dates: restrictions on seaborne crude applied from 5 December 2022 and those on refined petroleum products from 5 February 2023. It also explains the separate mechanism allowing transport to third countries and related services when Russian oil is sold at or below a price cap. The import ban restricts particular purchases into the EU; the service-linked cap creates a conditional exception for oil travelling elsewhere. The policy sought to limit revenue without requiring all global Russian exports to cease, and its enforcement depended partly on the shipping and service providers involved. (Council, EU sanctions against Russia explained, oil-import and price-cap sections)
The original crude cap was $60 a barrel. Product caps, applied from 5 February 2023, were $45 for discounted petroleum products and $100 for premium products. The Council says the caps cover specified seaborne crude and petroleum products originating in or exported from Russia, and that values can change with market developments and technical conditions. These amounts are ceilings linked to eligibility for covered services, not a guarantee that every Russian cargo is sold at that price. A cargo using providers outside the relevant jurisdiction can create a different enforcement problem. (Council, sanctions explanation, price-cap section)
The June 2022 package also extended the ban on specialised financial messaging services to Sberbank, Credit Bank of Moscow and Russian Agricultural Bank, as well as the Belarusian Bank for Development and Reconstruction. It suspended EU broadcasting by Rossiya RTR/RTR Planeta, Rossiya 24 and TV Centre International, while stating that research and interviews were not prohibited by that broadcasting measure. Export restrictions expanded to additional entities and 80 chemicals usable in chemical weapons. The same package prohibited accounting, public-relations and consultancy services to Russia. These are named measures, not evidence that Russia had been disconnected from every possible financial channel or that all journalistic activity by Russian outlets had been criminalised. (Council, sixth-package release, 3 June 2022, financial messaging, broadcasting, exports and services)
The Council's timeline dates the tenth package to 25 February 2023 and the eleventh to 23 June 2023. The twelfth followed on 18 December 2023, with later packages continuing into 2024. The official record distinguishes measures directed at Russia from related actions addressing Belarus's participation and Iran's military support. The instruments overlap in purpose but remain separate legal actions with their own targets and adoption dates. (Council, official packages timeline, 2023-2024 entries)
The fourteenth package on 24 June 2024 added a ban on re-exporting Russian LNG through the EU, a ban on new investment in Russian LNG projects and further restrictions on helium imports. It also targeted use of Russia's System for Transfer of Financial Messages and barred specified Russian funding for political parties, foundations and NG Os. The timeline lists restrictions on vessels contributing to the war and additional anti-circumvention tools. The LNG measure at this stage was a re-export restriction, not yet the later general EU import ban. Naming that difference is necessary because transshipment through an EU terminal and consumption inside the EU are distinct activities, with different commercial effects. (Council, official timeline, fourteenth-package entry, 24 June 2024)
The fifteenth package, dated 16 December 2024, added 54 individuals and 30 entities to sanctions and targeted 52 further vessels through port-access and maritime-service restrictions. It tightened dual-use export restrictions for 32 entities, some outside Russia. The Council also listed measures against recognition or enforcement of specified Russian court rulings and extended some divestment derogations. This combination shows that enforcement had moved beyond blocking exports from Europe: it addressed ships, suppliers in third countries, litigation and the practical exit of businesses from Russia. Each listed-vessel addition is a package increment, not the total number sanctioned by all coalition members or an independently measured size of the entire shadow fleet. (Council, official timeline, fifteenth-package entry, 16 December 2024)
The sixteenth package on 24 February 2025 added 48 individuals and 35 entities and restricted 74 further shadow-fleet vessels. It extended financial-messaging restrictions to 13 regional banks and targeted institutions outside Russia using its alternative messaging system. Other measures covered ports, locks, airports, additional media outlets and export controls for 53 entities, two-thirds of them in third countries. The seventeenth package on 20 May 2025 then added 17 individuals and 58 entities, including Surgutneftegas, and 189 further vessels. Read as a sequence, the two packages show repeated attempts to constrain transport and third-country supply routes. (Council, timeline, sixteenth and seventeenth packages, 24 February and 20 May 2025)
On 18 July 2025, the eighteenth package lowered the EU crude price cap from $60 to $47.6 a barrel and introduced an automatic adjustment mechanism. It added 105 vessels to port-access and maritime-service bans, bringing the EU listed-vessel total in that release to 444. The Council also sanctioned actors along the shadow-fleet chain, including companies managing vessels, crude traders, a refinery in India with Rosneft as its main shareholder, a vessel captain and a private flag-registry operator. These were EU decisions. (Council, eighteenth-package release, 18 July 2025)
The same eighteenth package imposed a full transaction ban on Nord Stream 1 and 2, covering goods and services and preventing completion, maintenance, operation or future use. It also expanded restrictions on Russian banks from specialised-messaging bans to transaction bans and added 22 banks. Export prohibitions worth more than €2.5 billion covered further goods contributing to defence and security capacity, including computer numerical-control machinery and propellant chemicals. A transaction ban on a pipeline project is not the same event as the physical pipeline damage; export restrictions valued by prior trade are not proof that €2.5 billion of actual annual sales would otherwise have occurred unchanged. (Council, eighteenth-package release, 18 July 2025, energy, banking and export sections)
The nineteenth package on 23 October 2025 introduced a Russian LNG import ban, added 117 vessels and restricted dealings with further Russian and third-country banks. The twentieth, adopted 23 April 2026, established the basis for a future maritime-services ban on Russian crude and products, targeted 46 additional vessels and imposed tanker-sale due diligence. Its other provisions concerned services to Russian LNG tankers and icebreakers, LNG terminals, banks and crypto platforms. (Council, official timeline, nineteenth and twentieth packages)
The twenty-first package, adopted 23 July 2026, added 218 listings:48 individuals and 170 entities. The Council said it imposed asset freezes and a funds-availability prohibition on 94 banks and major financial institutions, extended transaction bans to 33 additional Russian credit and financial institutions and added four non-Russian banks. It also targeted 14 crypto-related service platforms in Georgia, Panama, the UAE, the Marshall Islands, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus. This is a useful place to show how financial restrictions expanded through several channels rather than simply announcing that Russia's banks had all been "banned". (Council, twenty-first-package release, 23 July 2026)
The July 2026 package also paused automatic adjustment of the oil price cap until 15 July 2027, with an interim review. The Council linked the pause to exceptional energy-market conditions caused by closure of the Strait of Hormuz. This is a change to the adjustment mechanism, not an announcement that the price cap itself disappeared. It added 41 vessels to the 632 already sanctioned, extended rules to supporting vessels providing bunkering and other services, and designated eight entities and one person in the shadow-fleet ecosystem. For the first time, that ecosystem included a crewing agency. The text supplies a current EU listing context, while leaving the industry's broader informal fleet size unmeasured. (Council, twenty-first-package release, 23 July 2026, energy section)
Dual-use enforcement in the same package added 51 entities supporting Russia's military-industrial complex, some in China, Hong Kong, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Türkiye and the UAE. The Council named microelectronics, computer numerical-control machine tools and semiconductor-processing equipment among the supply concerns. Those designations establish the EU's restrictions and stated reasons; they do not make every company in those jurisdictions an evader. The package also addressed legal protection for EU operators facing Russian litigation related to sanctions. Placing these measures beside energy and banking restrictions gives the policy its actual breadth while keeping attribution: the Council is explaining its decisions, not providing a neutral census of every component Russia obtained abroad. (Council, twenty-first-package release, 23 July 2026, military-industrial and legal-protection sections)
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